Happy New Year! This month we have back-to-back talks by the genius web-based designer Emily Haasch, and a demo of a new interactive artwork from the multi-talented new media artist Jon Chambers. The talks will happen 7pm Thursday January 29 at Catalyze Chicago at 650 W. Lake Street, Suite 220. (Closest L station: Clinton Green)

Emily will be talking about how design can intercept or comment on capitalism through humor and general weirdness. Some of her influential projects and activities include Male Tears sweatshirt, Design Book Club, and this thing.

For his talk, Jon will briefly discuss his work while focusing on newer pieces from his recent show Everything Is Text. These works involve a character-driven, interactive element with a hyper-local wireless platform. Viewers submit messages for Morse-code interpretation and re-presentation as color and light. Chambers will set up this network at Dorkbot and audience members will be encouraged to type in and submit their haikus, non sequiturs, and mini-manifestos for an immersive visual environment. He will also go over the various tech elements that make this system run.

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Emily Haasch is a designer, artist, and tiny human. She physically resides in Chicago, Illinois, USA, North America, Earth. Her thoughts digitally reside on Twitter. With roots in collage and object design, she enjoys cultivating a practice that is interdisciplinary in regard to both medium and purpose. Lately, Emily has been interested in the intersection of design and the systems it both supports and resists. By questioning these themes, she has slowly been initiating digital and IRL projects to make sense of what it means to be a designer in 2015.Emily graduated with a BFA from SAIC in 2013. By day, she is employed as a designer for a small game studio in Wicker Park. http://www.emilyhaasch.com/

Jon Chambers’ work focuses on the production of art through technological objects, software, and networked interfaces while aestheticizing experiences of saturation, obsessions, and contradictions. He uses a range of mediums and has shown work nationally and internationally. Chambers currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. http://jonchambersart.com/

Dorkbot is a multi-city series of free informal talks by people who do strange things with electricity. It has been running since 2008. Do you do fun things with technology? Want to give a talk, demo, or workshop to other people playing with tech?

With tremendous excitement we are happy to have the multi-talented new media artist Chris Collins give a talk on his whole life’s work on the very month of his thirtieth birthday!

Collins is well known online for his humorous art games, videos, and participatory performative events. The talk will happen 7pm, Wednesday December 10 at Catalyze Chicago on 650 W. Lake Street, Suite 220.

In the new year we will have Jon Chambers (January), Yaloopop (February), Paula Nacif (March), and Bryan Cera (April)!

What is Dorkbot?

Dorkbot is a multi-city series of free informal talks by people who do strange things with electricity. It has been running since 2008.

Do you do fun things with technology? Want to give a talk, demo, or workshop to other people playing with tech? Please email Jen Chan [jennifer7chan(at)gmail(dot)com] and Josh Billions [josh(at)catalyzechicago(dot)org].

Chris Collins1 is a prolific new media artist exploring the way relationships are mediated through technology. Emphasizing humor, collaboration, and banality, he creates absurd online platforms2, participatory performance events3, videos4, video games5, and all sorts of digital ephemera. He is also celebrating his 30th birthday this week. Oh, what these eyes have seen.

For Dorkbot December, Chris will present a self-curated “thirty year retrospective,” with some recent projects alongside some older, ultra #rare deep cuts. He will use this work as an opportunity to discuss the importance of collaboration, the personal archive, and engaging with an audience outside your filter bubble.

Chris has an undergraduate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his work has shown nationally and internationally, notably at the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), SFMOMA, MCA (Chicago), The Nerberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY) and the Grimmuseum (Berlin)

Imagine if Facebook was just some large-scale dadaist performance, culminating in a simultaneous worldwide ALS ice bucket challenge!

In that reality, instead of TED talks, You’d have CONSENSUSCON!

CONSENSUSCON 2014 is a one-night event celebrating the launch of Consensus Online Writing Platform: a beautiful, game-changing cloud-based tool for realtime book collaboration.

This event is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this e-publishing revolution! Network with top industry professionals. Deepen your colleague relationships through team-building exercises!

Win exciting and exclusive prizes. Get very very drunk on some sort of weird punch, and then watch inspirational and thought-provoking talks, performances, and videos from some of the creative industry's top visionaries including:

Next Thursday November 13 at 7:30pm at Catalyze, experimental 3D artist and media art theorist Claudia Hart will be giving a talk on her famous augmented reality projects!

Catalyze Chicago is at 650 West Lake St. Suite 220. (Buzzer #129 to enter)Chicago IL.

Claudia Hart has been active as an artist, curator and critic since 1988. She creates virtual representations that take the form of 3d imagery integrated into photography, animated loops, and multi-channel animation installations. Hart is represented by bitforms gallery, NY. She is also Associate Professor in the department of Film, Video, New Media and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and honorary fellow at Eyebeam (NYC). For more info, please visit http://www.claudiahart.com/

Dorkbot is a multi-city series of free informal talks by people who do strange things with electricity. It has been running since 2008.

Do you do fun things with technology? Want to give a talk, demo, or workshop to other people playing with tech? Please email Jen Chan [jennifer7chan(at)gmail(dot)com] and Josh Billions [josh(at)catalyzechicago(dot)org].